This is the public NYC Mesh Wiki. It should be the main source for our documentation and help everyone join and run the mesh!
Visit NYCMesh.net for more information about the network as a whole.
To run this Wiki locally for development or in-mesh use, one can install jekyll and begin the server.
On Ubuntu / Debian, for example:
git clone ( this repo )
cd ( this repo )
apt install ruby
bundle install
bundle exec jekyll serve --host 0.0.0.0
The wiki is a series of markdown pages in git that are auto-generated via Jekyll via Github Pages.
In this way, the wiki is ultra-open and can be modified by pull-request. Simply clone this repo, make your update and make a pull request.
See more below in the FAQ
- For new categories, create a folder in the root with your category name. Inside it create an index.md file, using the standard page formatting.
- For new pages, create the page with the topic as the name and the md extension. As example: "routers.md"
- Pages require a header to function. The smallest header is just the "layout" field. Other fields are below.
The page header consists of a section like so:
---
layout: default
---
With the following fields:
layout: default Required. The layout field. This allows some wiki pages to do crazy things if needed, and all others to be standard.
title: Optional. This field will make a nice title for the page. If not given, it will take the first main heading in the page, which might not be what you want.
hidetitle: True/False Optional. This field can disable showing or auto-generating a title for pages such as a section index, etc.
category: Optional. This field will put the page in the category on the sidebar. It's highly recommended that is matches the folder you are in, but it's hard to force this. It seems silly to need to list this twice ( the folder and in the file ), but this is one of the idiosyncracies of this system.
Why not use a wiki software?
Most wiki softwares require a database, webserver, logins, etc. Our main website is on Github and to prevent bikesheding and encourage documentation, we want to put the wiki there also in a simple fashion. This also prevents from the wiki getting hacked by comment-bots etc. No server. No auth to manage. No comments. No spam.
Why not use Github wikis? Github wikis are not very nice looking, have no categories, and are very hard to navigate. They could be good for code questions / ideas and in conjuction with Github Issues but are a poor location to document hard projects.
What is this strange sitebar? In keeping the site open and simple, the sidebar is autogenerated with a little bit of Jekyll and css magic ( no javascript ). It is a bit buggy, but we can work on that.
How can I make a wiki like this? Clone this repo, or look at the origin of this, which is https://github.com/zgiles/wikiseed